Great expectations: Paul MacLean demands more from himself and his team

After a year as head coach of the Ottawa Senators, Paul MacLean should be feeling a little more comfortable.

He’s past the steep learning curve of last year, when he had to get used to a new team in a new city, and his first season was a great success.

He took the Senators to within one win of advancing to the second round of the playoffs, and was one of the three finalists for the Jack Adams Trophy as coach of the year.

But MacLean, 54, is anything but comfortable.

It took him 18 years to land a job as an NHL head coach, so he’s acutely aware of how difficult it is to get here.

He feels a lot like he did when, as a 22-year-old in 1980-81, he scored 36 goals while playing with the Salt Lake Golden Eagles.

He was feeling a bit full of himself until veteran teammate Floyd Thomson said, “oh, yeah, now you’ve got to do it again.”

That memory is a touchstone MacLean turns to often to remind himself that what you did last year doesn’t matter.

In the NHL, it’s all about what can you do for me today. There’s no charity in professional sport.

So as he gets ready for this lockout-shortened season, MacLean knows he’ll get to keep his job only if he gets results and his team wins, not because he is a good guy with an instantly recognized moustache.

“I worked real hard to get here as a head coach in this league, but I also know it’s going to be harder to stay,” he said.

“That’s the thing that scares me every day: Am I doing enough to allow myself and my staff to continue to work in this league? I bring that to the rink every day.

“I have a very healthy fear and a tremendous amount of respect for the league and the people who work in it, and I think I have a good understanding about how hard it is to be here and work here and have success here.

“That’s a motivator for me every day.”

Good thing.

The team’s turnaround last season, after a couple of nightmarish campaigns, raised expectations, so everyone will be watching closely to see what MacLean does for an encore.

His answer is: More of the same.

Having greater expectations placed on himself and the team is a great thing, he says, but it doesn’t mean they should suddenly change what they did last season.

The coaches and the players worked hard last season to establish an identity as a hard-skating, aggressive team.

The goal now is to do that more consistently, he said. That happens in increments, not overnight. But the more you do that, the more chance you have to succeed.

And MacLean expects exactly what the fans expect: That the Senators will be a good, competitive team.

“We can’t predict what other teams are going to do, or even what the outcome of our games is going to be,” he said. “All we can control is our work ethic, our consistency, and our determination as a team. We believe we have great and strong leadership on our team, and we have great and strong core of young players that are coming along.

“That’s a healthy thing for our franchise.

“If we lead them the right way, it’s going to make us better and we’re going to meet those expectations.”

He won’t have much margin for error, something he’s been thinking about.

While teams can survive slumps in an 82-game schedule, an early slump in a short season can put a quick end to a team’s playoff hopes. Teams can’t ease into a short season. They have to be playing well right from the start.

So coaches will have their hands full, and will have to do a lot of careful juggling.

“I think the real important part of it is going to be how you manage your players and how you manage your schedule and how you manage your injuries and how you manage the depth of your organization,” he said. “It’s a sprint right away. You have to come out and you have play.”

That will mean not being sentimental with the team’s young players.

If they’re playing well, they’ll continue to play. But if they slump, they’ll be replaced with fresh legs from Binghamton.

MacLean killed time during the lockout by being the face of the team in the community.

He volunteered at the Ottawa Food Bank, surprised minor hockey players by showing up as a guest coach, assembled rink boards at the newly renovated Jules Morin Park in Lowertown.

Like everyone else, he would have preferred to start in September, with the chance to build off the momentum the team generated last spring.

The four-month, energy-sapping lockout killed that, but MacLean is hoping that his players can still find a springboard in what they accomplished last year.

“Once we all get in the room together again, and once we get over what we’ve been doing (during the lockout), we’re hoping that the identity we established last year will address that right away — that this is what we are,” he said

“That’s what we’re trying to do: Get back to that identity we had last year.

“And I think once we start doing that, the guys will be excited once again.

“That’ll be important, because getting off to a good start and creating some momentum is going to be huge, not just for us, but for everyone in the league.”

Twitter.com/allenpanzeri2

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